Gentility exuded from the Miss Minetts, and--if it is permissible
slightly to labour the simile--their pores were permanently open. Owing
both to her antecedent and existing situation, it may be added, Theresa
Bilson was precious in their sight. For had she not in the past, like
themselves, sounded the many mortifications of a governess' lot; and was
she not now called up higher, promoted indeed to familiar, almost hourly,
intercourse with the great? Miss Felicia Verity was known to treat her
with affection. Mrs. Augustus Cowden, that true blue of county dames and
local aristocrats, openly approved her. She sat daily at Sir Charles
Verity's table and helped to order his household. What more genuine
patents of gentility could be asked? So they listened with a pleasure,
deep almost to agitation, to her performances upon the piano, her
reminiscences of Bonn and the Rhine Provinces, and, above all, to her
anecdotes of life at The Hard and of its distinguished owner's habits and
speech. Thus, by operation of the fundamental irony resident in things,
did Theresa Bilson, of all improbable and inadequate little people,
become to the Miss Minetts as a messenger of the gods; exciting in them
not only dim fluttering apprehensions of the glories of art and delights
of foreign travel, but--though in their determined gentility they knew it
not--of the primitive allurements and mysteries of sex.
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